Franz Rosenzweig's grave, Cemetery Eckenheimer Landstrasse, Frankfurt
15 de junho de 2016
13 de junho de 2016
12 de junho de 2016
9 de junho de 2016
8 de junho de 2016
Israel
Immigrants from Iraq, Poland and Romania wait for medical examinations at the Atlit transit camp in northern Israel (1951)
Inglaterra
Upper margin of the Exchequer Receipt Roll, Hilary and Easter Terms (1233)
The earliest known anti-Jewish caricature is a sketch—actually, an
elaborate doodle—in the upper margin of an English royal tax record from
1233. It shows three bizarre-looking Jews standing inside a schematic
castle, which is being attacked by a host of cartoonish horned,
beak-nosed demons. Another, larger demon in the center of the castle
tweaks the freakishly long noses of two of the Jews, as if to underscore
the resemblance between their profiles and his own.
7 de junho de 2016
But Ruth replied, "Do not urge me to leave you, to turn back and not follow you. For wherever you go, I will go; wherever you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Wherever you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. Thus and more may the LORD do to me if anything but death parts me from you."
Ruth 1: 16-17
(JPS)
6 de junho de 2016
5 de junho de 2016
4 de junho de 2016
2 de junho de 2016
1 de junho de 2016
31 de maio de 2016
We have wrestled with the fear to live, with the desire to step outside the current; now we may discover that reason's illness was merely an attempt to elude death. Man, chilled in the full current of life, sees, like that famous Indian prince, death waiting for him. So he steps outside of life. If living means dying, he prefers not to live.
Franz Rosenzweig, "Understanding the Sick and the Healthy"
30 de maio de 2016
29 de maio de 2016
Qumran
"Qumran and the Bible: Continuity, Innovation and Interpretation"
Gary A. Anderson: "Changing Conceptions of the Torah in the Second Temple Period"
Devorah Dimant: "From Jeremiah to Baruch in Qumranic Perspective"
James Kugel: "Human Sinfulness at Qumran and in the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs"
Devorah Dimant: "From Jeremiah to Baruch in Qumranic Perspective"
James Kugel: "Human Sinfulness at Qumran and in the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs"
28 de maio de 2016
26 de maio de 2016
25 de maio de 2016
Altneuschul
The Old New Synagogue or Altneuschul situated in Josefov, Prague, is Europe's oldest active synagogue (since 1270)
24 de maio de 2016
23 de maio de 2016
And Moses said to the LORD, "Why have You dealt ill with Your servant, and why have I not enjoyed Your favor, that You have laid the burden of all this people upon me? Did I conceive all this people, did I bear them, that You should say to me, 'Carry them in your bosom as a nurse carries an infant,' to the land that You have promised on oath to their fathers?
Numbers 11, 11-12
22 de maio de 2016
21 de maio de 2016
19 de maio de 2016
Yiddish
"Alle Tog tue das Gzang zingin/Den gotesh Diensht dingt fuer alle Dingin", Di Tsaytmashin
This is a musical realisation by Avishai Fisz of the last song from
"Sefer Simkhes Haneyfesh". The language is an archaic form of Yiddish
from Western Europe. The original title of the song is "Alle Tog tue
das Gzang zingin/Den gotesh Diensht dingt fuer alle Dingin" ("chant
this song daily, as working the lord cures everything"), and it deals,
(with certain amount of brutality), with the horrors evoked by the hour
of death, and with faith - which is the only given antidote to that
awaited bitter punishment. Sefer Simkhes Haneyfesh ("The Book of
the Rejoicing Soul") is an Ashkenazi songbook first published in Bavaria
towards the end of the 17th century, containing songs of morality for
the Jewish home. The songs describe in very witty rhymes the diversity
of customs for the various Jewish holidays, the exalted consciousness
attained by following the Jewish tradition, and the pure joy of
believing in god. The language of the songs is a form of Old Yiddish,
and the musical notation for the songs- the only musical notation
existing today for works of Jewish music written in that period-reveal a
mesmerizing musical pastiche, spanning from pure baroque polyphony to
very spicy folk tunes. Di Tsaytmashin (Yiddish for "the Time
Machine") Ensemble is dedicated to reviving both the text and music of
this unforgettable work, never yet heard since the 17th century.
18 de maio de 2016
Rodes
View of the Jewish businesses during the 1930’s located on the west side of the square, Old city of Rhodes, Greece
17 de maio de 2016
Be Bold! Be Bold! Be Bold!
This is my first commencement, and I think it’s a wonderful college
to be having it. I liked hearing a woman chaplain give in invocation; I
admire your distinguished and extraordinary President; and I agree
heartily with the content of the two speeches, especially their upfront
feminist sentiments, just delivered by two graduating seniors…
Graduation is one of the few genuine rites of passage left in our
society. You are, individually and collectively, passing symbolically
from one place to another, from an old to a new status. And, like all
such rites, it is both retrospective and prospective. You are graduating
(or being graduated) from college, which is the end of something. But
the ceremony we are participating in is called commencement.
That necessarily seasonal, minor literary form called the
“commencement address” also faces in two directions. It usually starts
with an analysis of the society or the era—appropriately pessimistic. It
generally concludes with a heavy dose of exhortation, in which the
young graduates, after having been suitably alarmed, are nevertheless
urged to be of good cheer as they go forth into the arena of struggle
that is your life, and this world.
As a writer, therefore fascinated by genres, as well as an American,
and therefore prone to sermonizing, I shall respect the tradition. The
times we live in are indeed alarming. It is a time of the most appalling
escalation of violence—violence to the environment, both “nature” and
“culture;” violence to all living beings. A time in which an ideology of
exterminism, institutionalized in the nuclear arms race, has gained
increasing credence—threatening life itself. It is also a time of a
vertiginous drop in cultural standards, of virulent
anti-intellectualism, and of triumphant mediocrity—a mediocrity that
characterizes the educational system that you have just passed through,
or has passed you through (for all the efforts and good will of many of
your teachers). Trivializing standards, using as their justification the
ideal of democracy, have made the very idea of a serious humanist
education virtually unintelligible to most people. A vast system of
mental lobotomization has been put into operation that sets the
standards to which all accede. (I am speaking, of course, of American
television.)
A singularly foolish and incompetent president sets the tone for an
extraordinary regression in public ideals, strengthening apathy and a
sense of hopelessness before the self-destructive course of foreign
policy and the arms race. The best critical impulses in our society—such
as that which has give rise to feminist consciousness—are under vicious
attack. An increasing propaganda for conformism in morals and in art
instructs us that originality and individuality will always be defeated,
and simply do not pay. There is a strengthening of the power of censors
within and without. The constraints which govern us in this society
have little in common with the grim normalcy of totalitarian societies.
Our society does not censor as totalitarian societies do; on the
contrary, our society promises liberty, self-fulfillment, and
self-expression. But many features of our so-called culture have as
their goal and result the reduction of our mental life, or our mental
operation; and this is precisely, I would argue, what censorship is
about. Censorship does not exist in order to keep secrets. The secrets
that censors target, such as sex, are usually open secrets. Censorship
is a formal principle. It has no predetermined subject. It exists in
order to promote and defend power against the challenge of
individuality. It exists in order to maintain optimism, to suppress
pessimism; that is to give pessimism—which often means truthfulness—a
bad conscience.
Of course, the grim assessments of our era—such as I have just
outlined—can themselves become a species of conformity. But only if we
have too simple a sense of our lives. Whenever we speak, we tend to make
matters sound simpler than they are, and than we know they are.
I have said that this rite of passage—commencement—is one that faces
in two directions. Your old status and your new status. The past and the
present. The present and the future. But I would urge that it is not
just a description of today’s exercises but a model for how you should
try to live. As if you were always graduating, ending, and,
simultaneously, always beginning. And your sense of the world, and of
the large amount of life before you, also should face in two directions.
It is true that the macro-news—the news about the world—is bad.
It is also true that your news may not be bad; indeed, that you have a duty not to let it be as bad for you. Perhaps the main point of knowing a rule is to be an exception to it.
It is also true that your news may not be bad; indeed, that you have a duty not to let it be as bad for you. Perhaps the main point of knowing a rule is to be an exception to it.
If your liberal arts education has meant anything, it has given you
some notions of a critical opposition to the way things are (and are
generally defined—for example, for you as women.) This attitude of
opposition is not justified as a strategy, as a means to an end, a way
of changing the world. It is, rather, the best way of being in the
world.
As individuals we are never outside of some system which bestows
significance. But we can become aware that our lives consist: both
really and potentially, of many systems. That we always have choices,
options—and that it is a failure of imagination (or fantasy) not to
perceive this. The large system of significance in which we live is
called “culture.” In that sense, no one is without a culture. But in a
stricter sense, culture is not a given but an achievement, that we have
to work at all our lives. Far from being given, culture is something we
have to strive to protect against all incursions. Culture is the
opposite of provinciality—the provinciality of the intellect, and the
provinciality of the heart. (Far from being merely national, or local,
it is properly international.) The highest culture is self-critical and
makes us suspicious and critical of state power.
The liberal arts education you have received is not a luxury, as some
of you may think, but a necessity- and more. For there is an intrinsic
connection between a liberal arts education, by which I mean an
education in the traditions and methods of “high” culture, and the very
existence of liberty. Liberty means the right to diversity, to
difference; the right to difficulty. It is the study of history and
philosophy- it’s the love of arts, in all the non-linear complexity of
their traditions- that teaches us that.
Perhaps the most useful suggestion I can make on the day when most of
you are ceasing to be students, is that you go on being students- for
the rest of your lives. Don’t move to a mental slum.
If you go on being students, if you do not consider you have
graduated and that your schooling is done, perhaps you can at least save
yourselves and thereby make a space for others, in which they too can
resist the pressures to conformity, the public drone and the inner and
outer censors- such as those who tell you that you belong to a
“post-feminist generation.”
There are other counsels that might be useful. But if I had to
restrict myself to just one, I would want to praise the virtue of
obstinacy. (This is something anyone who is a writer knows a good deal
about: for without obstinacy, or stubbornness, or tenacity, or
pigheadedness, nothing gets written.) For whatever you want to do, if it
has any quality or distinction or creativity- or, as women, if it
defies sexual stereotypes- you can be sure that most people and many
institutions will be devoted to encouraging you not to do it. If you
want to do creative work- if you want, even though women, to lead
unservile lives- there will be many obstacles. And you will have many
excuses. These do not mitigate the failure. “Whatever prevents you from
doing your work,” a writer once observed, “has become your work.”
All counsels of courage usually contain, at the end, a counsel of
prudence. In Spenser’s The Faerie Queen, Book III, there is a place
called the Castle of Busyrane, on whose outer gate is written BE BOLD,
and on the second gate, BE BOLD, BE BOLD, and on the inner iron door, BE
NOT TOO BOLD.
This is not the advice I am giving. I would urge you to be as
imprudent as you dare. BE BOLD, BE BOLD, BE BOLD. Keep on reading.
(Poetry. And novels from 1700 to 1940.) Lay off the television. And,
remember when you hear yourself saying one day that you don’t have time
any more to read- or listen to music, or look at painting, or go to the
movies, or do whatever feeds you head now- then you’re getting old. That
means they got to you, after all.
I wish you Love. Courage. And Fantasy.
Susan Sontag, Commencement speech, Wellesley College (1983)
16 de maio de 2016
15 de maio de 2016
12 de maio de 2016
11 de maio de 2016
10 de maio de 2016
"Tikvatenu" de Naftali Herz Imber
| I | |
עוֹד לֹא אָבְדָה תִּקְוָתֵנוּ
הַתִּקְוָה הַנּוֹשָׁנָה מִשּׁוּב לְאֶרֶץ אֲבוֹתֵינוּ לְעִיר בָּהּ דָּוִד חָנָה. |
Our hope is not yet lost, The ancient hope, To return to the land of our fathers; The city where David encamped. |
| II | |
כָּל עוֹד בִּלְבָבוֹ שָׁם פְּנִימָה
נֶפֶשׁ יְהוּדִי הוֹמִיָּה וּלְפַאֲתֵי מִזְרָח קָדִימָה עֵינוֹ לְצִיּוֹן צוֹפִיָּה. |
As long as in his heart within, A soul of a Jew still yearns, And onwards towards the ends of the east, His eye still looks towards Zion. |
| III | |
כָּל עוֹד דְּמָעוֹת מֵעֵינֵינוּ
תֵּרֵדְנָה כְּגֶשֶׁם נְדָבוֹת וּרְבָבוֹת מִבְּנֵי עַמֵּנוּ עוֹד הוֹלְכִים לְקִבְרֵי-אָבוֹת. |
As long as tears from our eyes Flow like benevolent rain, And throngs of our countrymen Still pay homage at the graves of our fathers. |
| IV | |
כָּל עוֹד חוֹמַת-מַחְמַדֵּינוּ
עוֹד לְעֵינֵינוּ מֵיפַעַת וַעֲלֵי חֻרְבַּן מִקְדָּשֵׁנוּ עַיִן אַחַת עוֹד דּוֹמַעַת. |
As long as our precious Wall Appears before our eyes, And over the destruction of our Temple An eye still wells up with tears. |
| V | |
כָּל עוֹד הַיַּרְדֵּן בְּגָאוֹן
מְלֹא גְּדוֹתָיו יִזֹלוּ וּלְיָם כִּנֶּרֶת בְּשָׁאוֹן בְּקוֹל הֲמֻלָּה יִפֹּלוּן. |
As long as the waters of the Jordan In fullness swell its banks, And down to the Sea of Galilee With tumultuous noise fall. |
| VI | |
כָּל עוֹד שָׁם עֲלֵי דְּרָכַיִם
שָׁם שַׁעַר יֻכַּת שְׁאִיָּה וּבֵין חָרְבוֹת יְרוּשָׁלַיִם עוֹד בַּת-צִיּוֹן בּוֹכִיָּה. |
As long as on the barren highways The humbled city-gates mark, And among the ruins of Jerusalem A daughter of Zion still cries. |
| VII | |
כָּל עוֹד שָׁמָּה דְּמָעוֹת טְהוֹרוֹת
מֵעֵין-עַמִּי נוֹזְלוֹת לִבְכּוֹת לְצִיּוֹן בְּרֹאש אַשְׁמוֹרוֹת יָקוּם בַּחֲצִי הַלֵּילוֹת. |
As long as pure tears Flow from the eye of a daughter of my nation And to mourn for Zion at the watch of night She still rises in the middle of the nights. |
| VIII | |
כָּל עוֹד רֶגֶשׁ אַהֲבַת-הַלְּאֹם
בְּלֵב הַיְּהוּדִי פּוֹעֵם עוֹד נוּכַל קַוֵּה גַּם הַיּוֹם כִּי יְרַחֲמֵנוּ אֵל זוֹעֵם. |
As long as the feeling of love of nation Throbs in the heart of a Jew, We can still hope even today That a wrathful God may have mercy on us. |
| IX | |
שִׁמְעוּ אַחַי בְּאַרְצוֹת נוּדִי
אֶת קוֹל אַחַד חוֹזֵינוּ “כִּי רַק עִם אַחֲרוֹן הַיְּהוּדִי גַּם אַחֲרִית תִּקְוָתֵנוּ”. |
Hear, oh my brothers in the lands of exile, The voice of one of our visionaries, [Who declares] that only with the very last Jew, Only there is the end of our hope! |
"Tikvatenu": the poem that Inspired Israel’s National Anthem, "Hatikva".
9 de maio de 2016
8 de maio de 2016
7 de maio de 2016
5 de maio de 2016
4 de maio de 2016
3 de maio de 2016
2 de maio de 2016
1 de maio de 2016
28 de abril de 2016
Geniza Afegã
Page of the commentary of Rav Sa'adia Gaon to Isaiah 34, in Judeo Arabic (10th century)
(Afghan Genizah collection at the National Library of Israel)
The Afghan Geniza is a collection of thousands of Jewish manuscript fragments found in caves in Afghanistan. Genizah is Hebrew for storeroom. The manuscripts include writings in Hebrew, Aramaic, Judeo-Arabic and Judeo-Persian, which are written in Hebrew letters. Some of them are 1,000 years old; they were found in caves that had been used as hideouts by Taliban. In 2013, the National Library of Israel announced that it had purchased 29 pages from this cache of document.
27 de abril de 2016
Klezmer
"Jegi Jegi", Sandaraa
Sandaraa has been hailed as “one of the most interesting and exciting things to happen in the New York music scene.” This new musical collaboration explores a vast repertoire of South Asian musical traditions blended with the sounds and sensibilities of Eastern Europe, the Balkans, and New York. The band captivates audiences and fascinates listeners with their unique sound and inspired approach to musical and cultural synthesis. Sandaraa is co-fronted by one of Pakistan and Afghanistan's most loved vocalists, Zebunnisa (Zeb) Bangash, and Brooklyn's Klezmer clarinet virtuoso Michael Winograd.
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